Digital video content can now be streamed to multiple clients in real-time over traditional cable television and telephone networks, both of which are being leveraged by service providers to provide more attractive and varied services to customers. In order for a streaming video service to be commercially successful, it must be able to recover from resource failures that will inevitably occur. To recover from resource failures, streaming networks are typically equipped with backup equipment. In the event of a resource failure, all of the affected streams of digital video content are switched over to the backup equipment in the same manner. Switching all of the affected streams of digital video content over to the backup equipment in the same manner results in the all the streamed digital video content being protected to the same level. Although this approach works well, as the quantity and variety of streamed digital video content grows, the resources needed to provide the same level of protection for all the streamed digital video content can become costly and may limit the ability of the network to scale up to support more streams and/or a greater variety of digital video content.